Fryer: Sunny Hills enjoying playoff thrill ride

Arlie Kearney might be the only 33-year-old man enjoying a rapidly advancing indicator of aging.

“I’ve added some gray hairs these past few days,” Kearney said.

Kearney is baseball coach at Sunny Hills. The Lancers have won three consecutive one-run games to advance to today’s CIF-SS Division 4 quarterfinals.

In the first round, visiting Sunny Hills beat Don Lugo of Chino, 3-2. The Lancers trailed, 2-0, going into the fifth inning.

They beat Grand Terrace, 7-6, in the second round. Sunny Hills had a 5-1 lead, then trailed 6-5 before pulling ahead to stay.

The Lancers beat West Torrance, 3-2, in the quarterfinals, hanging on after taking a 2-0 lead.

Sunny Hills baseball is in the semifinals for the first time since, as best as can be recalled, 1985.

Kearney was 3 years old in ’85. He’s aging quickly these days, but enjoying every moment of it.

Around the horn in Orange County baseball:

• The Huntington Beach and Mission Viejo semifinal games today are 4 p.m. games. Huntington Beach plays Norco in a Division 1 semifinal at Blair Field in Long Beach. Mission Viejo is home against Crescenta Valley in a Division 2 semifinal.

• The Division 1 semifinals usually are played as a doubleheader at Blair. The Hart of Newhall vs. Saugus doubleheader was moved to College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita because of geographical proximity to the participating schools. That left just the Huntington Beach-Norco game at Blair, and both schools agreed to make it a 4 p.m. game there.

• Crescenta Valley has final exams earlier in the day, so that Division 2 semifinal was moved to 4 p.m.

• Admission to Blair Field is $8 for adults and $5 for students with valid student identification and for children 12 and younger. Games open at 3 p.m.

• Just three years ago, Sunny Hills did not have enough freshmen baseball players to field a freshman team and had only nine players on its junior-varsity squad.

• San Clemente senior Connor Sealey went 6 for 7 last week. In the Tritons’ 4-3 win over Bonita of La Verne on Friday, Sealey led off the 10th inning with a double and scored the winning run.

• Mission Viejo sophomore Tanner Bibee pitched six scoreless innings in the Diablos’ 11-0 win over Oxnard in the second round last Tuesday and got the win in relief in the 2-1, eight-innings quarterfinals win over Royal of Simi Valley.

• Huntington Beach’s Hagen Danner got the pitching victory in the Oilers’ 3-0 win over Long Beach Wilson in the second round and drove in their first run in the 5-1 win over El Dorado in Friday’s quarterfinals. Having started the game at designated hitter, Danner was catcher the final two innings Friday.

• The Orange County All-Star Baseball Game is Monday at 6:40 p.m. at La Palma Park’s Dee Fee Field in Anaheim. Admission is $5 for the game that is organized and managed by the Kiwanis Club of Greater Anaheim for charity. Rosters are at ocvarsity.com.

• Sea View League teams are 7-1 in the playoffs. Academy League teams went 7-4 in the playoffs.

• The CIF-SS Division 1, 2, 3 and 4 championship games are at San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino on Saturday. The Division 5, 6 and 7 finals are at UC Riverside on Saturday. Specific starting times for the San Manuel Stadium games will be announced Wednesday.

• Admission to the games at San Manuel Stadium is $12 for adults and $5 for high school students with valid student identification and for children 13 and younger. Parking is $5.